The event itself attracted 17,000 visitors and 1,700 participated in the Congress, listening to over 100 speakers – both areas attracting more people than last year – this is indeed a growing show!

Cisco was well represented in panels and speaking sessions throughout the event, with Alon Bernstein´s talk on virtual CMTS’, Yves Padrines’ panel on Connected & Smart Homes – which was very well attended in spite of taking place on the last afternoon – we counted over 300 people! And of course my own involvement on a panel to discuss how Cloud is key to keeping service provider’s competitive against new players such as the Over-The-Top (OTT) providers.

The RDK – the Reference Design Kit – already catapulting into the cable landscape, by way of cloud-capable set-tops and gateways – is a hefty source of industry discussion as we head into ANGA COM, in Cologne.

As an active RDK Community member, we are already deeply involved with RDK launches, worldwide. We’re also poised to contribute an open source framework for broadband-oriented RDK equipment. So with that as a baseline, we’ll start the volley of “RDK at ANGA COM” with a quick update on some of our observations about the RDK marketplace, so far.

1) It really does make the launching of cool video services and rich, web-like navigation (much) faster. Allow me to tell you the tale of our colleagues at Hrvatski Telekom, in Croatia. Last year, the customer threw down the gauntlet with a request to flex its brand-new IPv6 network with IP video services, based on RDK — with a start-to-completion timeframe of 50 days.

Other design parameters: The user interface needed to be bi-lingual, and we needed Read More »

We are proud to put down in writing what we believe to be the first Reference Design Kit (RDK)-based deployment of IP video. Oh, and it is the first IPTV system running on IPv6. And one of the first based on a combination of premises based products and cloud-based services. And it all went from concept to turn-up in 50 days!

The deployment happened in Europe, but if you’re in Las Vegas this week at CES, we will also be demoing it for customers at The Wynn Hotel.

What was involved:

Our customer wanted to showcase its brand new IPv6 network by delivering a world-class IP video experience. An all-IPv6 IP video system had never been deployed before, so this was a non-trivial challenge. We chose to use the leading edge components in RDK in the IPv6 environment. Our challenge: they wanted it in and complete in 50 days, from project start to subscribers using it. To meet this challenge we turned to a combination of our new Videoscape Cloud Services SaaS offerings and premise based solutions.

Let’s talk about the toolkit that allowed us to deliver this customized solution in such a rapid timeframe. First and foremost, the delivery required all of the components to work in IPv6–only mode. It’s no great secret that Cisco is highly focused on IPv6 (understatement), and our RDK based systems are no exception. As our customers migrate from IPv4 to Ipv6, all of our video products are being widely deployed in mixed IPv4-IPv6 environments worldwide. As can be imagined, there were considerable production, testing and integration challenges with working in a pure IPv6 deployment.

For us, it’s a very big deal, because it makes us the market share leader in set-top boxes. It took a long time to get here. We’re very happy, and grateful, to the 150 service providers and media companies who chose us for the television services they deliver.

One of the reasons for the introduction of the set-top box, dating back to the analog boxes of yore, is to secure television programming from theft. On the condition that you’re a subscriber, you get access to multichannel video. That, and channel expansion beyond channel three (which was as high as early television sets could go) gave Read More »

One critical factor to stay ahead in today’s dynamic and competitive video market is the agility to deploy new services and hardware fast.

But what do service providers really need in order to be agile?

An open client software is a great start. It provides a core software base so service providers can focus on innovating rather than handling fundamental software components. It is continually enhanced by the developer community and easy to integrate with hardware and software components from third-parties or the open software community.

A fine example of open software for video CPE is the RDK (Reference Design Kit). Originally begun by Comcast two years ago, RDK is evolving into a standardized open software base for the industry. It is enjoying growing support from a broad community of Service Providers, SoC, OEMs, software vendors, and system integrators. It provides a shared set of software components for QAM, IP, and hybrid devices. And it has a modular, layered architecture for easy hardware and software updates.

As an open software that enables agility, RDK ticks all the right boxes.

But to realize that agility—that is, to actually bring new services and platforms to market at a rapid pace with success—service providers need a partnerwith the right expertise, resources, and software components

Some of the individuals posting to this site, including the moderators, work for Cisco Systems. Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not of Cisco. The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Cisco or any other party. This site is available to the public. No information you consider confidential should be posted to this site. By posting you agree to be solely responsible for the content of all information you contribute, link to, or otherwise upload to the Website and release Cisco from any liability related to your use of the Website. You also grant to Cisco a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free and fully-paid, transferable (including rights to sublicense) right to exercise all copyright, publicity, and moral rights with respect to any original content you provide. The comments are moderated. Comments will appear as soon as they are approved by the moderator.